Budapest

On Thursday, I spent a very hot day traveling 8 hours on a train from Sarajevo to Budapest.  Unfortunately the train's air conditioning in the car that I was in, and only in that car, was not working.  Arriving in Hungary's capital sweating and stinking, I managed to find my hostel during the failing light.  Almost immediately I met 2 Frenchman, a Brit, a few Spaniards and a fellow American (the first I have seen or met since Venice) who I would spend the next to nights exploring the nightlife in Budapest (which is very good).  The following day I explored the city making a notable stop at the "Terror House".  This complex was taken over and used as the headquarters for the Nazi's in Hungary.  Subsequently, with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, the building was converted into the headquarters of the Soviet intelligence, interrogation and torture in its satellite communist state.  The building now houses a museum dedicated to telling the horrors inflicted on the Hungarian people under the two subsequent occupations.  The following photo was taken of the monument that stands outside this unassuming building on one of the main streets in Budapest.

On Saturday, I spent most of the day (and the night) taking photographs from the two hills that overlook the city of Budapest.  On top of one sits the citadel fortress and the other the Royal Castle that seated the Hungarian half of the throne in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (shown below).

And some pictures of the city during sunset and twilight respectively.

One of the main sites in the city is the Chain Bridge which connects the city of Buda and city of Pest across the Danube River.  During World War II, the bridge was destroyed and was also badly damaged during the 1956 Revolution against the Soviets making it a symbol of the city's suffering under occupation.

Today, I traveled from Budapest to Vienna.  Thankfully it was much shorter (3 hours) and also had working air conditioning   I will do a post on that tomorrow before I leave.